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a selected discography The Good Brothers
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biography/discography I knew I was going to be a drummer when I was ten years old. I'm of Ukrainian descent and us Ukrainians like to have big, festive weddings and my parents attended a lot of them. There was always a band playing polkas and dance music and I would sit at the side of the stage watching the drummer like a bug under a magnifying glass, trying to figure out what they were doing. I realized that there would be one hit on the bass drum followed by a hit on the snare, while the stickon the hihat went tick tick tick tick, and that all these hits were related. I had figured it out before I could actually do it and the first time I sat down at the drums I was able to play the groove from the Rolling Stones' "Get Off Of My Cloud"-it went boom sack-boom sack-boom sack wacka-wacka-wacka. From then on I was hooked. Fast forward ten years. I'm a mixed up young adult with no clue of what's going on except I have this burning desire to play the drums. I've been practicing and taking lessons, but I'm green and unseasoned. I answer an ad in the paper, go and audition and wind up in a rock band called Tesseract. Thus begins the network that led me to David Wilcox and my real education as a musician. We formed a band called "The Rhythm Rockets" and began to get a following around Toronto. The band rises and falls and eventually Wilcox goes solo and forms a trio with Kit Johnson and me. We go into the studio (sans Kit) and record a bunch of songs but Wilcox and I drift apart. Then the album is eventually released and the hits start filling up the airwaves-"Hot Hot Poppa", That Hypnotizin' Boogie", "Bad Apple", "Do the Bearcat". (Wilcox doesn't credit me on the album, but that's another story for another time). By this time I had moved on and was playing with the Good Brothers. I played on their first hit "Fox On The Run". My drumming skills and my network continued to grow. I become established as a roots/blues drummer and I begin freelancing around town and start getting back-up gigs: Sylvia Tyson, Amos Garrett and Geoff Muldaur, Colleen Peterson, Ellen McIlwaine, Etta James, Dr. John, John Sebastian, Leroy Sibbles, Ken Whitley, Blind John Davis, Otis Rush, Taj Mahal, the Wild Strawberries, the Pukka Orchestra, Penny Lang, Bob Snider and the list goes on and on to the present day. I figure that I have played in about 50 bands-blues, rock, reggae, country, bluegrass, swing, alternative, pop, rock-a-billy, funk, soul, folk, klezmer, and experimental music. I have played with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, played on film scores, commercials, been in videos and have toured all over Europe, Canada and the United States in tour buses with Sharon Lois and Bram, Prairie Oyster and Jann Arden. I have crossed Canada by road at least twenty five times with various bands(usually in Dodge vans) and have basically spent my entire adult life in bands playing the drums. In 1990-91, after playing professionally for almost twenty years, I attended Humber College School of Jazz for three semesters and have periodically taken lessons from notable drummers such as Peter Magadini, Paul DeLong, Don Vickery, Memo Acevedo, Quammie Williams and Dom Famularo. There is no end to learning, to practicing, to growing as a drummer and as a musician. Studios and stadiums are my favorite kind of work, but really I am open to just about anything that is creative and challenging. Currently, I still reside in Toronto doing freelance session work and playing regularly with such artists as Treasa Levasseur, Whiskey Jack, Shakura S'aida, Mel Brown, Brian Blain and I tour internationally with Bill Bourne. Once each semester I do a drumming clinic/workshop at T.A.R.A and I have a limited private teaching practice.
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